The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Police: Gunman was in school for over an hour
UVALDE, TEXAS » The gunman who massacred 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school was inside for more than an hour before he was killed in a shootout, law enforcement authorities said Thursday amid mounting public anger and scrutiny over their response to the rampage.
A media briefing called by Texas safety officials to clarify the timeline of the attack provided bits of previously unknown information. By the time it ended, though, it had added to the troubling questions surrounding the attack in the town of Uvalde, including about the time it took police to reach the scene and confront the gunman, and the apparent failure to lock a school door he entered.
After two days of providing often conflicting information, investigators said that a school district police officer was not inside Robb Elementary when 18-yearold gunman Salvador Ramos arrived around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, and, contrary to their previous reports, the officer had not confronted Ramos outside the building.
Instead, they sketched out a timeline notable for unexplained delays by law enforcement in responding to the attack.
Ramos crashed his truck near the back of the school at 11:28 a.m. Thursday, then fired an AR-style rifle at two people coming out of a nearby funeral home, said Victor Escalon, regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Ramos then entered the school “unobstructed” through an apparently unlocked door at about 11:40 a.m., Escalon, said.
But the first police officers did not arrive on the scene until 12 minutes after the crash and did not enter the school to pursue the shooter until four minutes after that. Inside, they were driven back by gunfire from Ramos and took cover, Escalon said.
The crisis came to an end after a group of Border Patrol tactical officers entered the school roughly an hour later, at 12:45 p.m., said Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Travis Considine. They engaged in a shootout with the gunman, who was holed up in a fourth-grade classroom. Radio chatter at 12:58 p.m. indicated that he was dead.
In the hour in between, the officers called for backup, negotiators and tactical teams, while evacuating students and teachers, Escalon said.
But he largely ignored questions about why officers were not able to stop the shooter sooner, saying he had “taken all those questions into consideration” and would offer updates.
Many other details of the case and the response remained murky. The motive for the massacre — the nation’s deadliest school shooting since Newtown, Connecticut, almost a decade ago — remained under investigation, with authorities saying Ramos had no known criminal or mental health history.
During the siege, frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the school, according to witnesses.
“Go in there! Go in there!” women shouted at the officers soon after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who watched the scene from outside a house across the street.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw defended the agency on Wednesday, saying: “The bottom line is law enforcement was there. They did engage immediately. They did contain (Ramos) in the classroom.”